Our aim is to investigate which verbs show the highest textual frequencies in the Kartvelian language Megrelian. The general assumption is that unmarked verbs represent lexical core concepts and that they will emerge among the verbs with the highest text frequencies, showing crosslinguistic similarities.

In the second half of the twentieth century, a new type of adverb, viewpoint adverbs formed with the suffix -wise, appeared in English. This article traces the diffusion and development of viewpoint -wise adverbs using American and British newspaper corpora, the spoken component of the British National Corpus, and the Longman Spoken American Corpus. It is shown that the adverbs are at least twice as frequent in the spoken corpora as in the written, that they are increasing in both American and British English, and that the originally American adverb type is now more frequent in British English. Its spread seems to be motivated by both functional and social factors. In newspapers, a high proportion occurs in represented speech, and the major domains are sports, art and entertainment, and “living.” It has extended its range of bases from nouns to noun phrases and, to some extent, generalized to adjectives and adverbs.

Corpora have been used for pedagogical purposes for more than two decades but empirical studies
are relatively rare, particularly in the context of grammar teaching. The present study focuses on
students’ attitudes towards grammar and how these attitudes are affected by the introduction of
concordancing. The principal aims of the project were to increase the students’ motivation by
showing them that English grammar is more than a set of rules in a book and to enable them to
assume more responsibility for their own learning. The idea was to introduce the use of language
corpora into the curriculum for first-semester English at Växjö University in Sweden, as a
complement to grammar textbooks and ordinary exercise materials. Between classes, the students
worked with problem-solving assignments that involved formulating their own grammar rules based
on the examples they found in the corpus. In the classroom, a system of peer teaching was applied,
where the students took turns at explaining grammatical rules to each other. Besides presenting a new
way of working with grammar, we also provided the students with a tool for checking questions of
usage when writing English texts in the future, since the corpus we use is free of charge and available
to all. The work with corpora and peer teaching was evaluated by means of questionnaires and
interviews. This article describes and evaluates this initiative and presents insights gained in the
process. One important conclusion is that using corpora with students requires a large amount of
introduction and support. It takes time and practice to get students to become independent corpus
users, knowing how to formulate relevant corpus queries and interpret the results. Working with
corpora is a method that some students appreciate while others, especially weak students, find it
difficult or boring. Several of the students did not find corpora very useful for learning about
grammatical rules, but realized the potential of using corpora when writing texts in English.

With the realization that introspection and the use of dictionaries constitute a
precarious foundation for studies of metaphor and metonymy, corpora have in
recent years been used increasingly in the endeavour to explore the authentic use
of figurative language (see, e.g. Deignan 2005; Stefanowitsch and Gries 2006).
Similarly, investigations of phraseology (e.g. Moon 1998) have come to rely
heavily on modern large-scale corpora, while analyses of evaluative lexis in the
tradition of John Sinclair (e.g. Sinclair passim; Hunston and Thompson 1999;
Stubbs 2001) have a theoretical commitment to the corpus as an indispensable
tool. The present paper brings together these theoretical strands.
It is commonplace in cognitive linguistics that human cognition is embodied
(cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Langacker 1987, 1991; Kövecses and Szabó
1996; Gibbs and Wilson 2002; Gibbs et al. 2004). Therefore it is no surprise that
many phraseological sequences are built up around words related to the body,
and in this corpus-based case study we have chosen to focus on the evaluative
functions of metonymic and metaphorical sequences containing the noun nose.
In comparison with other body parts, such as the hand and the mouth, the nose is
fairly restricted in its use. Whereas in some cultures, like Maori and Inuit, the
nose has an additional social importance as it is used for greeting, in western
societies the nose seems to have predominantly negative or humorous connotations
(cf. Gogol’s The Nose). One can only speculate about the reasons for this:
perhaps it is the predominance of bad smells, or the association with snoring and
the excretion of mucus. Some sequences containing nose also imply that the
agent is behaving like an animal. As an example of the latter type of connotations,
consider (1) to (3) with the metonymic sequence stick one’s nose somewhere.
This sequence is most frequently negative, as in (1), sometimes slightly
ironic, as in (2), and occasionally positive, as in (3) (see further section 4.1.1). (1) The Steinbrenner we remember was always sticking his nose in where
it’s not wanted. (NYT 1996)
(2) As soon as it’s nice enough to stick your nose outside, this place is
packed (…) (Ind 2000)
(3) Stick your nose in it. Grind it out. You can’t be turning the other cheek
all the time. (NYT 1990)
In contrast to most studies of evaluative language we will consider both
instances where speakers express their opinions about other people’s activities
and cases where the disapproval is on the part of the agent in the clause without
the speakers conveying their opinions of this.

Söderlundh, HeddaJournal article in International Journal of the Sociology of Language;216 : Walter de Gruyter (2012)

peer-reviewedscientificARTICLE

English abstract:

As part of the internationalization of higher education, more and more European university courses are being taught in English. Exchanges between universities have grown, and students from different parts of the world now often study together. What does this international environment look like in linguistic terms? Do students and teaching staff speak only the course language English, or are other languages also used, and if so, in what situations and contexts? These questions are discussed on the basis of an ethnographic study of an English-medium university course in Sweden. Extended examples of interaction show that participants adapt their use of languages to place-bound needs and conditions, giving rise to local norms. The national language Swedish holds a special position, as the first language of the majority and the lecturer. The course language English is dominant as a de facto lingua franca, but local social and linguistic needs and conditions leave room for other languages as well. Overall, course participants orient to three competing principles of language use: (a) English as a lingua franca, (b) the speaker's orientation to her or his own language and (c) the special position of Swedish, as the first language of the majority and the lecturer.

Parliaments are basically adversarial settings that instantiate the polarization of political power. In debating the pros and cons of available alternatives, parliamentarians are supposed to observe convention-based institutional norms and regulations. However, in critical moments these rules are strategically violated to achieve political goals. Gender-related asymmetries in parliamentary power balance tend to emerge in disorderly parliamentary behaviour and/or disruptive discourse practices. This article focuses on the way in which the rules, procedures and practices of parliamentary interaction are being transgressed in mixed-gender encounters. The results indicate that a range of five context-specific master suppression techniques1
are used by both female and male MPs to enact and reinforce their own power position and, at the same time, to challenge and undermine the opponent's authority and credibility. A micro-level analysis of gender-related disruptive discourse practices in the UK Parliament and the Swedish Riksdag shows how different parliaments, with different rhetorical styles and traditions, often exhibit different forms and manifestations of rule violation, on the one hand, and different reactions to disorderly discursive behaviour, on the other.

Petersson, Bo; Vamling, KarinaJournal article in Euxeinos;12 : Center for Governance and Culture in Europe, University of S:t Gallen (2013)

scientificARTICLE

English abstract:

President Vladimir Putin’s claim and policies to resurrect Russia as a great power have been a cornerstone for the construction of the hegemonic position of power that he has for so long successfully exerted and upheld. This paper discusses the Russian great power ambitions in relation to national identity and popular appeal, and puts them in relation to the upcoming Winter Games in Sochi in 2014. The paper examines how this mega-event is discursively constructed as a manifestation of Russia’s return to great power status, and as such is meant to convey certain messages internally as well as externally. The successful carrying out of the Games would no doubt constitute an important component in the undergirding of the – otherwise visibly dwindling - legitimacy of President Putin. They would be an important display window for manifesting the prowess of the Russian great power, and the location of the Games to the Caucasian city of Sochi in the Russian South would have a deeply symbolical aspect. If the Games can be successfully carried out in a region that has for so long been experienced as volatile and unruly, then it must surely mean that internal order has been restored in the Russian great power. However, it is argued in the article that there are several potential tripwires on the way towards achieving these symbolically important goals. Problems of security, terrorism, geopolitical volatility, large-scale corruption and inter-ethnic tension loom large, and may all turn out to be formidable obstacles and render the hosting of the Games a counter-productive enterprise. The paper puts official discourse (as in official speeches, media interviews, et cetera) in relation to scholarly analyses of the problems and potentialities of the Sochi Olympics, all in the general framework of Russia’s self-image and identity as a great power.

This study discusses an adverbial pattern which has so far been largely over- looked, namely ADV1 and ADV1, as in again and again, on and on and over and over. The paper is primarily based on the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The data show that these patterns follow typical paths of change, such as a movement towards more abstract meanings (metaphorization; over and over increasingly referring to repetition rather than to physical motion), lexicaliza- tion (e.g. up and up being used as a noun with idiosyncratic meaning in on the up and up), subjectification (e.g. on and on expressing negative connotations), iconic variation (again and again and again referring to multiple repetitions), simplification (loss of again after over and over), and the development of dis- course functions (and on and on meaning “and so on”)